Image source, AFP

Thanks for following our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic today. We're pausing now until tomorrow morning - but before we go, here's a summary of the day's global headlines.

• New figures have revealed a stark racial disparity in the impact of the virus in the US - Black and Latino Americans are three times more likely to become infected than white Americans, and are twice as likely to die of Covid-19
• Meanwhile, US drugs regulator the FDA has cast doubt on President Donald Trump's prediction that a vaccine will be ready this year
• In India, too, the medical council had set an August deadline for developing a vaccine - but scientists in the country have now said this is unrealistic

• Australian state New South Wales has shut its border with neighbouring Victoria to try and stem a surge in cases - the first time in a century that the border between the two states has been closed
• Bolivian Health Minister Eidy Roca has tested positive for the coronavirus - the third member of the country's cabinet to be infected in just four days
• The Louvre museum in Paris, France, reopened today after being closed for almost four months. There are new safety measures in place, including mandatory masks and a limit on the number of people allowed to visit
• Vietnam has reported 14 new cases of the virus - all of whom are Vietnamese citizens in quarantine after returning from abroad. The country, which has recorded no deaths of Covid-19, is frequently praised for its swift and early response
• Just 100 people attended a ceremony to formally swear in Malawi's new president Lazarus Chakwera today, after plans for a larger celebration were abandoned for safety reasons
• Globally, there have now been more than 11,495,000 confirmed cases, and over 535,000 deaths, according to the tally kept by US-based Johns Hopkins University

Our live coverage on coronavirus today will soon come to a close, do join us again tomorrow.

On our team today were: Vicky Baker, Owen Amos, Yvette Tan, Krutika Pathi, Max Matza, Gareth Evans, Mary O’Connor, Ashitha Nagesh, Alice Evans and Claire Heald.

Image source, Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Here's a summary of the UK headlines as we wind down our coronavirus live page coverage for the evening:

• The arts industry has, for the most part, welcomed a £1.57bn government cash injection to help venues to stay afloat throughout the pandemic - although some industry figures have questioned how the money will be allocated and when venues will be allowed to reopen. One theatre has offered an insight into how it will apply social distancing
• Sandwich chain Pret A Manger says it will close 30 outlets and is expected to cut at least 1,000 jobs at other shops as part of a post-pandemic restructuring
• Barbers, hairdressers, tattoo parlours and nail salons have reopened in Northern Ireland as part of a major easing of lockdown measures. Visiting rules at hospitals and care homes have also been eased, meaning many people can see loved ones for the first time in months
• Beer gardens and pavement cafes have reopened in Scotland. Business owners have warned that their biggest hurdle could be persuading customers that it was safe to go out to eat and drink - while ministers urged people not to go to places that don't have good safety measures
• And in Risca, Caerphilly county, a grandfather has finally held his baby grandson for the first time, now that lockdown measures in Wales have been eased to allow people to travel more than five miles from home and form an "extended household"

Image source, Getty Images

There were no positive results in the latest round of testing for coronavirus in the Premier League.

Some 1,973 players and club staff were tested for Covid-19 between 29 June and 5 July.

There have now been 12 rounds of testing carried out in the English top flight, with 19 positive results so far.

The Premier League season resumed on 17 June after being suspended for 100 days because of the pandemic.

As coronavirus spread rapidly around the world, time stood still for the residents of a tiny village in Buckinghamshire.

For the miniature inhabitants of Bekonscot model village, life in the 1930s time warp continued as normal, largely unaffected by the pandemic that had gripped the world.

It has now welcomed its first visitors since the lockdown was announced in March.

You can read more about the opening of the outdoor attraction here.

Image source, Getty Images

More than 130,000 people have now died of Covid-19 in the US, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The grim milestone now means that more than twice as many people have died in the US than in Brazil, which has the second-highest death toll.

The US has an estimated population of 328m, against Brazil's of around 210m.

The US also has almost 2.9 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.

New York has the highest death toll of the states, with more than 32,000 deaths - but confirmed cases are now surging in southern states too.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

The fact more than a fifth of coronavirus tests done – around 2.5 million – have not yet been processed is not as worrying as it necessarily sounds.

Certainly some have had to be voided, because of a problem in how they were carried out or difficulties in labs.

It is not clear how many this has affected.

But the majority are thought to be not yet recorded for other, less concerning reasons.

A large chunk are kits that have been posted out, but not yet returned. Some of them will be, but it is accepted many may not.

People could be stockpiling them or may have requested them and then gone to a testing centre instead.

This may seem wasteful, but is perhaps a price that has to be paid for trying to make tests as easy as possible to get hold of.

A number will be tests that are still working their way through the system - tests can take 48 hours before results are recorded.

There are also a few hundred thousand that have been sent out as part of the government’s surveillance programme run by the Office for National Statistics that have not be returned by participants.

Image source, Getty Images

Harvard University has announced that it will allow some students to return to campus in autumn.

The plan calls for 40% of the student body to return to the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, and for all first-year pupils to return. All courses will be available online only.

Harvard University is one of the top academic institutions in the US and charges tuition fees of over $46,000 (£36,000) per year.

It's going online has raised questions about whether families are willing to pay such high fees for virtual lessons.

Several parents have already filed lawsuits against universities in the US, which closed in March as the country went into lockdown, claiming that their children were denied the education that they had paid for.

Alistair Coleman
BBC Monitoring

Image source, Getty Images

A viral post on Twitter claims that Ghislaine Maxwell – a British former girlfriend of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – has been diagnosed with coronavirus in a prison in New Hampshire where she was taken after her arrest.

One post has been shared over 72,000 times and it cites, as evidence for its claim, a story from a US satirical news website - the Brown Valley Observer.

The site published a story about Ms Maxwell and Covid-19 but on the website’s ‘about us’ page – it says “all news stories contained within are fictional in nature”.

The idea that she might encounter some calamity while in custody feeds into existing conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s death while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Fake news can spread widely on social media and chat platforms, particularly when people don’t click through to the story after seeing a sensational headline, or stop to consider whether it is truthful or not. The BBC’s anti-disinformation unit offers tips on how to spot a fake.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Image source, AFP

The “single biggest” problem hurdle facing the UK in keeping the virus suppressed is identifying people who are infected but not coming forward for testing, the head of NHS Test and Trace in England says.

Baroness Dido Harding told the House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee that it's clear there are more cases out there than are being picked up – although she said this was an issue across the world, because the nature of the virus means some people have it without showing symptoms.

Currently an average of just over 600 cases a day are being found by the UK's testing programme, but the government’s surveillance programme run by the Office for National Statistics suggests there could actually be over 3,000 a day.

Baroness Harding said NHS Test and Trace was looking at ways to find more cases, including backward contact tracing. Currently when a person is infected the contact tracing system focuses on who they may have passed the virus on to - backward tracing looks at whom they may have got it from.

Work is also continuing on the app, she said.

The BBC understands one option being pursued is to build features into the app that alert people to when they have been in areas with high rates of infection, as well as telling them how they are doing with social distancing by giving them a daily tally showing the number of close contacts they have had.

The hope is initiatives like these will encourage them to download the app when it is launched. No date has been given for launch.

Millions of coronavirus tests are not being recorded, according to new data from the UK government.

Some 10.5 million tests have been "made available" since testing began, but only eight million of those have been "processed", the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) says.

More than two million tests, or about one in every five tests, are either not being sent back to laboratories or are being voided.

"Some members of the public may order a test and then for whatever reason they choose not to return that test," the prime minister's official spokesman told reporters.

He said he had not seen a "verified number on this" when the DHSC figures were put to him.

It comes as Downing Street defends its decision to stop publishing daily figures on the number of people being tested - in favour of the number of tests being done.

"DHSC will no longer publish the number of people tested daily anymore and will instead publish the number of daily tests processed," the PM's spokesman said.

"This is because the daily people tested statistic only counts new people being tested. For example, someone who is tested in February and then tested again this month will only be counted once."

The testing system in England has been criticised in recent days, after figures showed many people are still waiting more than 24 hours to get their results - despite the prime minister pledging to make this happen by the end of June.

And an investigation by BBC Panorama last week found thousands of contact tracers in England failed to trace a single contact in the first three weeks of the test and trace system.

Image source, The Old Vic

Now for some reaction to one of the big stories coming from the UK today - the announcement of a £1.57bn support package to protect the arts during the coronavirus epidemic.

The decision followed several weeks of lobbying from theatres, music venues, art galleries and other cultural institutions - many of which said they were on the brink of collapse.

And a string of theatres have already announced plans to make staff redundant, after being closed since the virus took hold.

While the funding has been warmly welcomed, venues are sounding a note of caution as they await further details on how the money will be allocated and news of when venues will be allowed to reopen.

From world-famous composers to local theatre owners, and galleries in London to culture event organisers in Leeds, here's some reaction from across the creative industry.

A generous doctor who's been working with Covid-19 patients in New York has reportedly treated A&E nurses in Newcastle to lunch.

Dr William Predun, who works in Cold Spring Harbor in Long Island, had spent a year at Newcastle University in 2014 when he was studying for his medical degree.

"He wanted to donate some money for [nurses at Royal Victoria Infirmary] to have lunches because they’re working so hard, and he asked if I could coordinate it," Frank Spence, who owns Frankie and Tony's cafe, told the Newcastle Chronicle., external

“He gave us $200, which worked out to 50 lunches, and we threw in some free brownies as well.”

The nurses, Frank says, were "really chuffed".

BBC Radio 5 Live

Image source, Matt

BBC Radio 5 Live has been hearing today from people with ongoing problems after having coronavirus. Matt, a 40-year-old teacher from Altrincham, caught Covid-19 in March. Fifteen weeks later, he is still dealing with symptoms.

“It’s been a rollercoaster journey,” he said. “The last 100 days I’ve been trapped in my own home, unable to walk more than 100m.

“I’ve had a never-ending cycle of symptoms ranging from breathing difficulties to a racing heart rate brought on by tiny amounts of exertion.

“It’s not only physically tiring and challenging. Mentally, it’s been extremely difficult coping with the isolation.”

Matt has a two-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. He says not being able to read his daughter has been difficult.

“I’ve been unable to speak more than a few words so things like reading bedtime stories just haven’t been an option. It’s been difficult losing that contact with her.

“She knows I’ve been ill. I’ve told her so many times I’m getting better only to be back in bed 20 minutes later. It’s been really tough on the whole family.”

Image source, Getty Images

Vietnam has reported 14 new cases of the virus - a very small increase compared to many countries, but it is significant in a country with its track record.

More than 80 days have passed since there was a domestically transmitted infection in Vietnam and the country has reported no deaths.

Experts say its swift response and subsequent lockdown proved extremely effective.

But that doesn't mean there aren't still dangers.

All the latest cases were Vietnamese citizens who were in quarantine after returning from abroad.

As is the case around the world, health officials are wary that any lapse in the quarantine system could see a new outbreak quickly develop.

You can read more about Vietnam's response to Covid-19 here.

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

One in 10 Covid-19 infections in England between 26 April and 7 June were among health and social care staff working directly with patients and residents, an investigation by the Royal Society has concluded, external.

One in 10 in-patients acquired their infections in hospitals, the report also says.

A lack of protective equipment at the early stages of the outbreak meant that infection rates in hospitals were bound to be high.

The availability of PPE now means that the spread of the virus to health and social care workers has decreased.

But, according to the Royal Society’s expert group, there’s much more to be done. Their report highlights a lack of co-ordination and surveillance of the spread of infection in hospitals in England.

• Remembering NHS and healthcare workers who have died
• Why are more people from BAME backgrounds dying from the virus?
• Care-worker death rate twice that of health workers

In particular, it calls for better data collection to understand why ethnic minority staff have been disproportionately hit by Covid-19.

Other recommendations include faster identification of cases in hospitals, sharing of information with the care sector and more research to investigate how to drive down infection rates still further.

According to newly released data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Latino and African-Americans are three times more likely to become infected with the coronavirus than white Americans.

The data, which tracks 640,000 infections detected in nearly 1,000 US counties, external, was released to the New York Times after they filed a freedom-of-information request to the US government for access to the racial statistics.

Black and Latino Americans are also twice as likely to die from the virus.

There are currently 2.8m people infected with Covid-19 in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Image source, Getty Images

More than eight in ten Canadians say the border with the US should remain closed to non-essential travel while their neighbours struggle to contain a growing surge in coronavirus cases.

The survey was conducted by Ottawa-based Nanos Research for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Travel between the US and Canada (as well as the US and Mexico) was halted on 21 March. The survey found that 81% of Canadians want the border to stay shut indefinitely, while another 14% said it should reopen, but only in places were infections remain low.

Canada has recorded more than 105,000 coronavirus cases as of Sunday, compared to the more than 2.8m in the US.

Image source, Getty Images

Greece has banned all but essential travel from Serbia as infection numbers steadily rise in the Balkan country.

From today, all entry points are closed to Serbian travellers for a week, Greek officials said.

It comes days after the Serbian authorities reimposed lockdown restrictions in the capital, Belgrade.

In the last 24 hours there have been another 302 infections reported in Serbia, with more than 16,000 total cases and a death toll of 311.

For context, in May there were about 50 new cases reported daily.

You can read more here.

Latest UK government figures show, external a further 16 people have died after testing positive for coronavirus.

It brings the government’s official death toll to 44,236.

Remember though – the number is often lower than the trend on Mondays, due to delays to reporting data over the weekend.

• What do global death patterns reveal about the UK?
• How many confirmed cases are there in your area?